If any of you read this originally, I apologize. I removed it because I was unhappy with the second chapter. After getting some help from SuperPaperBag, I've managed to fix up chapter 1 to fit it in with chapter 2. I'm still editing chapter 2, so I hope you enjoy this regardless.

Disclaimer: I do not own Grand Chase or its sexy characters.

"Oh come on, this has been dragging on now for 10 months, it's gotta happen eventually!" The purple haired chieftain paced after Zero, throwing his arms up in exaggeration of his frustration. Zero's response was simply to pick up speed.

"For your information, you useless worm, Zero may do as he pleases." Grandark easily glared at Dio from his position on Zero's back.

"Oh, so now you're letting that retarded sword speak for you too?! For fuck's sakes, Zero, at least give me a god damned answer yourself!" Dio picked up his speed, almost running to keep up with the wanderer's fast walk, his loud voice ringing through the hallway.

"My answer from 3 minutes ago still stands." Zero spoke quietly in comparison to Dio, taking a corner quickly in hopes of losing the persistent leviathan.

To his surprise, it worked. He heard Dio's quick and heavy footsteps stop after he rounded the corner. The wanderer let out the breath he did not realize he was holding, slightly disappointed and at the same time relieved that Dio had chosen to quit following him. He could now go train in peace.

Dio stopped and let the wanderer walk away from him. He knew it was pointless to push Zero; the wanderer would not change his mind from arguing. Dio growled and punched the wall with his left hand, knowing he wouldn't feel it anyways. He reared back when cracks started to form in the rock of the wall, realizing he hit the wall harder than he had intended. Dio knew he'd get shit for this later, but at the moment he didn't care. He flexed his left hand to survey the damage to himself, but his hand looked fine. It might've hurt had he been wearing the rakes he normally wore over the glowing blue skin, but he had taken them off when cuddling with Zero earlier. His left hand was naturally stronger than his right, as it was literally glowing with power, so he wasn't surprised that he was able to wiggle all his fingers and confirm he had no broken bones. He looked back at the wall. The crack had grown while he had been staring at his hand. Yeah, he was going to get shit for this. There was an indentation where he had hit; this would be noticed. Knight Master would find out one way or another that he was the one who did it. He grumbled to himself and turned to head to some other room of the castle and away from his vile handiwork.

"Oooooo, you're gonna get in trouble for that, you know." A high voice cooed from behind him. He didn't need to turn around to know who it belonged to, and he had no interest in dealing with the child at the moment.

"I ran out of fucks to give, go bother someone else." Now it was his turn to storm away from someone without looking back. He knew she'd follow him, she always did. He felt her small hand grasp his pant leg as she ran to keep up with the taller man's strides.

"You have bad language. Uncle Sieghart said he'd wash my mouth out with soap if I said words like that. He might wash yours out too!" Dio resisted the urge to swat the small girl away from him. He was still unsure as to why Sieghart had adopted the child, but she was innocent and didn't seem to realize that the other Chasers didn't trust the demons as much, as she seemed to follow the leviathan around more often than he deemed necessary. She liked bugging him about his relationship with Zero.

"He can fucking try, I'll rip out his throat!" The chieftain growled, his hand glowing as his anger boiled further at the mention of the immortal. The girl didn't seem impressed, showing no signs of fear or surprise at his outburst.

"You and Uncle Zero fighting again?" Dio was sure the question was innocent enough, but it still pissed him off.

"Bug the fuck off, we're not fucking fighting again!" Dio roared, his eyes glowing as he stopped and glared at the child. She rolled her eyes as she ran back the other way, clearly knowing better than to push his buttons further. He was sure Sieghart specifically trained her to push his buttons. Absolutely positive. At this realization, he decided to go punch the immortal's shit in, because it was obviously all his fault.

The leviathan stormed off in a random direction, itching to take his anger out on something.

Zero had found a training buddy with Jin, as both were currently sparring with each other in the outdoor training field behind the castle. Grandark didn't mind it that Zero wasn't training with it; in fact, it was encouraging Zero to strengthen himself… by pointing out his mistakes.

"Move faster! How are you supposed to cause any damage when you move like a snail?" Grandark's voice echoed from behind Zero's back, as Zero was shoved back with a well aimed kick from Jin that the wanderer easily blocked.

"A well timed hit, even if slow, can cause more damage than wildly flailing!" Jin shouted back at Grandark, aiming another kick at Zero's legs, to which Zero easily jumped backwards to avoid, swinging his fist to hit Jin while he recovered. Though, as Grandark had instructed, the move was fast and imprecise, and Jin easily moved his head to avoid it. But the wanderer followed up, and Jin wasn't fast enough to dodge the hit completely, the hard blow glancing off the fighter's shoulder, sending Jin stumbling backwards to recover.

"Why change something that works! Ha!" Grandark shouted gleefully at Zero's connected hit, clearly pleased the wanderer could hit the well trained fighter.

Jin growled, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before continuing. Grandark pissed everyone off, though some people knew how to better deal with its obnoxious personality better than others. The corners of Zero's mouth twitched downwards upon thinking of Dio. The wanderer knew Dio was the worst at dealing with the sword. He felt badly about the way he had treated Dio earlier, but he was unsure how else to react to the things Dio had done earlier.

Dio was still overly pleased with himself over what happened at the cliff, and had started becoming more persistent in his efforts to get into the wanderer's pants. Earlier today, while they had been cuddling in Zero's room, Dio had slipped his hand onto the wanderer's groin. This act alone would not normally bother Zero; he was getting used to these attempts and simply removed the chieftain's hand and requested him not to do that. Dio would make some joke about it, but leave it alone for the day. Today had not been like that. Only moments later, Dio had once again tried his advances. Again, Zero had removed Dio's hand and demanded that the chieftain stop this, or he would leave. Dio made another joke, rested his hand on Zero's hip for only a moment before he tried pulling Zero's pants off. At this, Zero lost his patience, and, knowing asking Dio to leave would be pointless, got up himself, grabbed Grandark from his place facing the wall, and left.

This was how their fight had begun, and Zero had made a promise to himself not to forgive Dio for this behavior until the leviathan properly apologized for his actions. He figured the leviathan was least likely to bug him while he was training, especially since Grandark was with him. Zero realized this was partially cruel, but he knew Dio needed some time to calm down before the wanderer would hear an apology.

He was lucky Jin had been training today as well. It seemed Jin was trying to hide from Amy, though the reason Jin had given behind it confused the wanderer. He was not sure what "on the rag" meant, but he assumed it had something to do with her writing music, as Zero had heard her trying to play something new the other day.

So Zero and Jin had decided to train together. Jin served as a good sparring partner, he didn't mind going full out with their training. Thus the two of them fought, and while fighting, Zero completely forgot about Dio. The day was a very warm one, though, and it wasn't long before both the wanderer and the fighter were sweating profusely. Jin picked at his vest in disgust, and Zero felt hindered by the sticky cloth that clung to him.

Jin laughed, easily removing his vest and undershirt, tossing them aside. "I haven't trained this hard in some time! Reminds me of the old days of the Silver Knights! We used to train for hours under the sun…" The rama trailed off, a wistful look crossing his face, his guard dropping. Zero took this as an opportunity to get a good hit in, and knew Gran would approve of him showing Jin not to let his guard down around the wanderer.

Zero dashed forward and threw a punch with everything he had, aiming at the fighter's stomach. What surprised the wanderer was that Jin was totally ready for him by the time the hit connected, and the shisa simply grabbed Zero's fist and flung the seeker off to the side. The wanderer staggered with his momentum, keeping himself from falling over. He heard the fighter laugh, and looked over his shoulder to see Jin bouncing in a fighting stance with his fists up.

"It'll take more than that to fool me! You move much too slow, your sweaty armor is slowing you down." The fighter instructed, moving to stretch himself out after flinging the heavy wanderer so far.

Zero pondered this for a moment, before Grandark snapped at him. "You fool; you could have landed a good blow if you were faster! Now he will be expecting that! You wasted a good chance to show him up!"

This decided it for the seeker, and he quickly removed the armor restricting his upper body movements, and reluctantly removing his sweaty shirt. He didn't feel entirely comfortable this exposed, unlike the fighter Zero moved to stand across from once again. Jin easily fell back into an offensive position, prepping to aim a kick at the demon. The two knights once again easily fell back into their sparring, and Zero noticed he certainly did feel less restrained without his upper armor on.

The rama staggered backwards after blocking a hard blow from his sparring partner, throwing too much of his weight onto his back leg to keep from being pushed too far away. Zero noticed this shift of weight, and while Jin was still recovering, the seeker shot out his leg and kicked out Jin's back leg from underneath him. The force of the kick sent Jin's leg flying out backwards, and the sudden way Jin shifted his weight meant the fighter was soon toppling forward, and taking Zero with him.

The two men fell awkwardly to the ground, Jin landing on top of Zero in a fairly compromising position. Jin blushed madly, and attempted to throw himself off of Zero before either of them were seen in such a scene. Jin reached out to help the wanderer up, but quickly drew back his hand and felt awkward, instead scratching the back of his head.

"Err… Sorry, uh…" The fighter looked off in another direction, unable to think of anything to say.

Zero felt uncomfortable. He didn't much like unnecessary physical contact, only letting Dio near enough to touch him, especially when he was as exposed as this. He instantly felt guilty about being in such a compromising position with another man, and when Jin said "Let us never speak of this incident to anyone," Zero was inclined to agree.

In the end, Dio hadn't found Sieghart. He found Ronan, but the guard master, being an expert mediator, had ended up minimizing the damage Dio caused to the kitchen, which was where the chieftain had found himself ending up. Ronan walked Dio back to the chieftain's room, and left him alone. Ronan had suggested apologizing to the wanderer, but Dio had insisted that he had done nothing wrong. Now that he was alone, lying on his bed and staring at the wooden beams running along the ceiling, Dio thought that maybe he had done a few things wrong. Maybe he had pushed the wanderer too hard earlier. After all, completely turning Zero off from sex wasn't going to help his cause. Maybe he had to lay off a bit, and let Zero come around on his own? But hadn't Grandark said something about that? He couldn't exactly remember, whenever that stupid sword opened its metaphorical mouth to speak, Dio ignored it, especially when he was mad. The leviathan remembered he had been pretty mad earlier, too. Yes, Dio was pretty sure Grandark had said something along those lines when Zero had stated he wasn't interested in getting so intimate yet. This fact made the leviathan want to do the complete opposite, but he knew that piece of scrap metal was probably right, for once. Not that he would admit so out loud. Ronan was probably right, too. Dio decided when Zero was done training that he would apologize.

Dio knew it would be a while before Zero was done training, so he decided to bother the other Chasers while he waited. He found Sieghart reading a story to Kathrine on the couch in the sitting room. The child took the book out of Sieghart's hands and got off the couch and went god-knows-where just in time for Dio to take a lunge at the immortal, summon his scythe and begin to destroy the sitting room for the second time this week while the two once again fought for no other reason than to kill each other. Dio slashed where the immortal lay stretched out, only for his scythe to rake through where Sieghart had been a moment before, while the immortal hopped over the back of the upholstery and unsheathed his sword. Sieghart asked no questions as to why Dio would start this, only retaliated by jumping back over the couch and attempting to kick Dio in the jaw. Kathrine shouted something about telling Knight Master from somewhere behind the leviathan, but he didn't care. This was something he could finally take his frustrations out on.

Half an hour, several pieces of destroyed furniture, and a very upset Knight Master later, Dio was heading back to his room with the promise of added missions and docked pay for the next few weeks, but Dio didn't mind. He felt refreshed and alive, and much less aggravated. He decided to spend the remaining time waiting for Zero in the wanderer's room. Of course, he ended up getting distracted, and found a very pleasing way to spend his time waiting, though he realized after that now he'd also have to apologize for staining Zero's sheets.

It wasn't long before Zero returned, and upon noticing the chieftain resting on his bead, Zero tensed, unsure what to expect. Dio sat up when he heard the door close once again, but didn't look at Zero, instead casting his gaze to the floor.

"I'm… Sorry. About earlier. I was kind of a dick. And…" Dio pursed his lips while he thought of what to say, still not looking to the wanderer's face. He figured it pointless, as he knew Zero was wearing his mask anyways.

There was a sudden weight on the bed near Dio. He hadn't noticed the wanderer as he crossed the room and sat beside him. Zero lightly rested two fingers under Dio's chin, gently tilting his head up to look the wanderer in the eyes. Dio noticed that Zero had removed his mask, and lost his train of thought as he was prompted into staring into Zero's eyes.

"And?" Zero calmly reminded the chieftain, still not removing his hand from under Dio's chin, though Dio put up no resistance to look away. He never did, Dio didn't mind the wanderer's emotionless eyes any more, as they weren't always emotionless any longer. There were times when dozens of emotions would pass through Zero's eyes in a matter of moments, and it pleased Dio whenever he got to witness those moments, as they were proof that the wall Zero had built around himself over many years was slowly crumbling down. These moments were still rare and far between, but Dio nonetheless requested that Zero removed his mask whenever they were together.

"And I'm sorry I kept pushing you to do something you didn't want to do?" The words rushed out of Dio's mouth a bit quickly and jumbled together, ending on a questioning note, tentatively, as though he were afraid Zero wasn't quite pleased with this apology. But after a moment, Zero nodded a single nod of approval, relaxing his hand and letting it drop from under Dio's chin, though Dio's own hand soon found it and took it in his own.

"So am I forgiven?" Dio's eyes lit up at the prospect of gaining Zero's forgiveness so easily.

"Yes, you are forgiven." Zero answered easily, leaning in to kiss the leviathan while he watched Dio's face change from an anxious, waiting look to one of sheer, beaming bliss.

But before Zero could connect the kiss, the leviathan continued. "Also, can I be forgiven for ruining your sheets?"

"Dio…"

Zero laid beside the sleeping leviathan, unable to find sleep himself. Now that the wanderer had forgiven Dio, he once again felt guilty about his earlier sparring match with Jin. As suggested, Zero had not brought it up, and Dio had not asked, instead assuming the wanderer had been training with Grandark. The silver haired demon hadn't denied it, lying to the stygian by simply stating training had been tough, as usual. Thinking back on it now, the seeker wished he had simply come out and said it while Dio was seeking forgiveness. He was positive the leviathan would have forgiven him had the smaller demon convinced him they were even. Zero was unsure he could continue to hide this from Dio, and it was on this thought that the wanderer fell into an uneasy sleep, his body too tired to keep him awake any longer.

The demon did not sleep long. His dreams were ridiculous and clearly stemmed from his guilt, but that did not stop Zero from being affected by the nightmares. The wanderer slowly sat upright, careful not to disturb the snoring magenta mass beside him. Zero took deep breaths in an attempt to slow his breathing and steady his racing heart. He shook his head, as though that would chase away the clinging web of fragments of the dream that still remained. Unsettled by this odd occurrence, the silver haired demon decided he needed some time alone to rest. He carefully crawled out of the shared bed and picked up the deeply sleeping leviathan, carrying Dio back to his own room.

A/N: I haven't died! I've just been extremely unmotivated lately. But I recently read a lot of ZeroxDio stuff so I got inspired to write about them, because I basically worship the ground SuperPaperBag and GuardPuppy walk on (well, I would if I could) and read everything they write about these two because it's always AMAZING. So if you haven't read their stuff I think you should.

I'm sure I'll eventually get back to my other stuff. Some day?

First of all, I think Dio's rake hand is detachable. I've seen 3 official pictures where he's not wearing it, so even though you can't take it off or change it in-game, I think it can come off. I know not everyone believes this, but I'm the writer right now so my word is law. Nyan~

Also, Zero is incredibly innocent, isn't he? Poor sap.

I love writing ZeroxDio fluff. I know this was particularly bad, even for me, and there was a lot of unnecessary randomness in it, but let's face it, this whole story in unnecessary, so I don't feel particularly bad.

I put an OC in. My bad! But I really wanted to have Kathrine show up. I have so many head stories now about Zero, Dio, Sieghart, and Kathrine that I had to have her show up. Couldn't resist. I blame GuardPuppy, because her AU of BtL (and my fantasizations of what would happen next) are basically what spawned her. AND NOW GUARDPUPPY IS CONTINUING IT! So my world is complete~

Also, that whole paragraph about Sieghart and Dio fighting was completely unnecessary, but I really like writing about the two of them trying to kill each other. I would have kept going with it, but I knew the story had to go on. I'm sure I can fill another one shot about the two of them fighting.

Long A/N is long.

-Barrows